Catch You When You Fall
by Tahllydarling
Summary: They aren't built for sentimentality; she has no idea how to handle his pain or her own. For Clint, however, she will try. Implied Hawkeye/OC. May end up being the start of something longer. Chapter viewpoints may vary!
1. Comfort

Disclaimer: _They aren't mine, I just borrowed them for a while._

**_Catch You When You Fall_**

During the years of their association there is barely an inch of Clint Barton's body that Natasha hasn't seen at one time or another. They've been partners so long, been through so much together, that she knows his scars as intimately as she does her own and she can narrow each of them down to the facts of how they were obtained.

Firstly, there's the scar that traces the outside of his right thigh, a knife wound obtained in Sarajevo, eleven dead, one dictator assassinated. There's a small silver scar on his left side where she extracted a bullet in Bogata; three dead, no civilians injured. A cluster of five small scars dust his right pectoral,the remnants of shrapnel damage, so faded that you'd have to know where to look to see them. They came from a bombing in Kiev in which two agents lost their lives. The fingers of his left hand are calloused and rough after years of working with a bow and there's a small scar on the palm of his hand where she cut him during training and he was too stubborn to have it stitched.

Nobody lived in their world without obtaining scars. In their line of work errors were paid for in flesh and blood, sometimes body parts too. It's a credit to his skills and his training that he has so few visible scars to show for his long career. She doesn't believe that scars diminish a person, she sees them as an indication of who a person is and what they have survived. '_Scars breed character' _or so her grandmother told her when she was young but not all scars are obvious.

Years as his partner means that she knows his scars and she knows his thoughts, but it terrifies her to find him fully clothed beneath the spray of his shower, his gaze haunted as the water washes someone else's blood from his skin. Barton does not gloat over his kills or celebrate them, but he does not behave like this either. This Clint Barton, the man who is sobbing brokenly and stares with empty eyes at the tiled walls of the shower, is a man she does not know at all.

The Black Widow does not deal in sympathy and sentimentality, that was drilled out of her long ago, but when it is her partner who is in pain she is compelled to do all she can to ease him. Gesturing to the medical staff who brought her here to wait, she moves closer to him calling his name softly. He doesn't respond, not when she speaks, not when she sinks to her knees in front of him on the wet tile of the shower stall. She ignores the icy water that soaks into the knees of her suit, too rattled by the way his iron grey eyes stare straight through her, so unlike their usual sharp and inscrutable gaze.

"Clint?" she tries again, aware that despite his current state he is still heavily armed. She doesn't need to see the weapons to know that they are there; even unarmed a SHIELD agent is always dangerous. His body has been honed into a weapon by vigorous training and years of experience in the field. "Can you tell me what happened?"

He swallows convulsively, throat working around the words that he can't quite get out. Silently, Natasha watches the red tinted water swirling toward the drain and longs to reach out and shut off the icy water that rains down on him. As the moments drag on between them, she begins to give up. Rising to her feet and already heading back to the waiting medics, she almost misses the words when he finally speaks.

"She was cold," he says, voice barely above a whisper, so quiet that she has to struggle to hear the words. It wasn't his usual voice; it's the hoarse whisper of a man who has screamed too loud and for too long, a raw ruin of his usual tone.

Natasha closes her eyes and takes a deep breath to compose herself. She should have realised that one of the few things that could unmake a man like Clint Barton is the loss of the thing he holds most dear. If the blood swirling around them belongs to the woman she suspects, then there is no telling whether she will ever see the man she trusts more than anyone else ever again.

He is watching her when she turns back to him, her face carefully schooled to hide her emotions. The ability to hide her feelings is one that she learned much and earlier and it proves invaluable. She notices for the first time how very pale he is, how red his eyes are and the way in which he obviously favours his left shoulder. His pain gnaws at her, making her stomach churn.

"I didn't get there in time to stop her from getting hurt Tasha," he explains, stumbling over the words. "I couldn't help her."

She doesn't realise that she is moving until she is kneeling at his side, her hand reaching for his own as she pulls him against her. Clint let her manhandle him, putting up no resistance as his silent tears continue to mingle with the water that flows over them both. She knows he's in trouble when he turns his face into her shoulder and sobs out his pain against her skin. Natasha shushes him and rocks him, trying to give him whatever comfort she can, while her own eyes begin to prickle.

They aren't built for sentimentality; she has no idea how to handle his pain or her own, no clue how to help him through this emotional minefield that could so easily destroy him. For Clint, however, she will try.


	2. Torment

It doesn't matter how much water pours down from the shower head, he can't get the blood off his hands.

Clint Barton is accustomed to the moments after a kill and the inevitable weight that settles on his shoulders in that time, but he never regretted taking a life if that life was a threat. He does what he does to make the world a safer place, to stop people from gaining too much power over others, to make sure that others can sleep easy at night – even if he sometimes can't himself.

This is not the weight of a kill made that troubles him. This is the pain of making a mistake that could break him. It isn't the first time that he's seen an agent fall in the line of duty, he still wears the scars of coming face to face with his own death on several occasions, he doesn't fear it the way he imagines most people do. Death is just the final step in a life that he chose for himself many years ago. He does fear not being there for Natasha if she needs him though. He fears the thought of a world without Eve Winchester in it. Tonight he faces the very real possibility of facing one of these fears head on.

He doesn't know how it all went wrong so quickly. All he knows is that the woman he considers his to protect is down in the medical wing fighting for her life. He knows that he begged her to stay with him, remembers the way her eyes flickered as he pressed his hands over hers while they tried to slow the bleeding. He can still feel the way her fingers slipped from his own as the medics pulled him away.

They gave up trying to move him from outside of the operating room, eventually recognising that no matter what they said it would make no difference. Sitting on the floor in the hall, his back pressed to the wall, he couldn't bring himself to find somewhere to wash the blood off his hands. Her life had painted him red and all he could do was watch as it dried. The steady beeping of the heart monitor was his only reassurance. As long as he could hear it she was still with him... there was still hope.

He doesn't remember walking the hallways as the hours passed with no news, doesn't remember Fury ordering him to clean up and get some rest. He can't explain how he found his way back to his quarters, or how he came to be beneath the shower, fully dressed and shivering. All he knows is that her blood is on his hands and he almost lost her tonight.

"She's alive Hawkeye," Natasha reassures him, deliberately using his agent identity to draw a response from him. For the first time since she stepped into the stall with him he sees her. Natasha doesn't deal in half truths, not with him. They might lie to the rest of the world but they never lie to each other. The Black Widow does not hide from him, she hasn't since shortly after he spared her life and brought her here, he is one of the few men she truly trusts. If she tells him that Eve is alive then he must take her at her word.

Forcing himself to believe, allowing himself to hope, he pulls away from her embrace and looks around the spacious shower stall. For the first time since his brief shower that morning he sees the bathroom clearly. On shaky legs he climbs to his feet and stumbles from the stall, supported all the way by Natasha's grip on his elbow and the arm that she wraps around his waist. Together, the pass the medical team and the curious onlookers who have gathered to see what is happening and she leads him along the hall. It takes him a while to realise that they are heading towards her own quarters; it isn't where he wants to be but he knows that nobody will disturb him there. No-one on this base was foolish enough to tangle with Natasha in order to get to him, nobody except the one woman who was still in surgery.

He chooses to ignore the glances that come his way but Natasha meets each and every set of eyes as they pass, challenging the onlookers to speak up or get the hell out of her way. She talks softly to him, calming him with words that are mostly unheard over the thundering of his heart. What she says is largely unimportant, it's the tone that matters and he takes comfort from it as he is supposed to.

Inside her room she grabs a towel from her private bathroom and throws it to him, along with a set of oversized sweats that he recognizes as his own. It's fortunate in moments such as these that she's always had a penchant for hanging onto his clothing after missions, using whatever she collects as her clothing of choice when she wants to relax. He complies when she towel dries his hair and helps him to change out of his wet clothes. He doesn't fight her when she tucks him into her own bed with strict instructions to rest. He doesn't have the strength to argue and right now the only thing keeping him from cracking wide open is the steady gaze of those green eyes. Those eyes and the words she spoke to him in the shower._ Alive... still alive. _

Although he settles into Natasha's bed and the chill begins to seep from his bones, he finds that he cannot sleep. Exhausted he reels from the mental images that assault him every time he closes his eyes. A face too pale. Eyes that flicker as their owner struggles to breathe around her pain. A sea of red on steel. Blood that drips like gunshots in the silence. The sound of her murmuring his name as she lost consciousness.

Aware that Natasha is close by but allowing him his privacy, Barton stares at the walls and he waits, shivering beneath the blankets, for the dawn. He waits for someone to come and tell him that Eve is dead.


	3. Prayers

She has never liked the medical wing. The smell of the infirmary has always made her vaguely nauseous, not surprising when she considers the many times she's had to come here following missions, sometimes to have her own injuries treated and sometimes just to keep Clint here long enough to let the doctors do their job. There is a reason why they try to patch one another up whenever possible and the smell that assaults her the moment they step through the doors is part of it.

Fury is waiting just outside the recovery room doors, his face showing the exhaustion he must be feeling after remaining there most of the night. It's a well-known fact that he never leaves an agent alone after an injury. Unless they have someone at their side, he is there. Natasha realises that after he sent Barton away he must have taken over the watch and remained there throughout the remainder of her surgery. As he takes in their appearance, he stops pacing.

"Barton. Romanoff." The director inclines his head to each of them. His voice is steady, calm. Natasha takes reassurance from it but she feels Clint's arm begin to tremble beneath her touch, instinctively she moves closer to him, hoping that he isn't about the collapse to the tile below them. She needn't worry. Clint has retreated behind a mask that lets him hide his emotions from those around him, in front of Fury he will maintain his composure. "She's alive."

Barton's head snaps up as he shrugs out of her grip and moves to the window that looks into the room. She doesn't have to follow him to see his reaction to what lies on the other side of the glass, she sees the strain that is weighing so heavily on him; there are shadows behind his eyes that whisper of deeper sorrows than he will ever confess. When she joins him and follows his gaze she understands his shock entirely.

Eve's skin is paper white except for the places where the bruises have begun to flower. Monitors, IV lines and tubes surround the bed where she rests and there is an oxygen mask covering her face. She is covered by only a thin hospital gown, her chest wrapped in gauze with her bruised arms lying by her sides. She has never looked so tiny or so vulnerable as she does in this moment. It is the stillness of the woman in front of her that terrifies her, that and the stillness of the man who watches her through the window.

"They took out two rounds. She lost a lot of blood during surgery and she's hasn't regained consciousness yet," Fury explains, coming up behind Barton and placing a hand on his shoulder. "She has a couple of broken ribs and her left lung was punctured, she'll be monitored through the next twenty-four hours but the doctors are confident that she could make a full recovery. They'll assess her further when she wakes up."

She waits outside with the Director, both of them watching as Clint enters the room and walks stiffly to the chair at her bedside, like a man who is quietly bleeding out from an unseen wound. His lips move as he leans closer but she cannot make out the words. As he takes Eve's hand in his own, carefully wrapping his fingers around her bruised and broken ones, Natasha turns to the man at her side. "Will she make it?" she asks, fighting to keep her tone professional.

"She lost a lot of blood," he repeats, avoiding her gaze, "and she flat lined once on the table, but if I were a gambling man I'd put everything I have on that woman right there, same as I would if it was one of you two lying in that bed."

_A chance that she could make a full recovery... _Meaning that there is also a chance she might not recover fully from the injuries she sustained. Until Eve takes her final breath, Natasha will not allow herself to mourn for what might yet be saved. She holds a prayer in the back of her mind, a remnant of her Russian origin, while something she cannot name claws at her throat. Her breath feels uneven. Her heart races in her chest. She isn't used to this level of sentimentality, his pain is too close... Too close.

This is a profession in which the price of missions is paid not in coin but in blood, a profession in which the reward for bravery is often seen in scars rather than formal recognition. _If I were a gambling man... _Fury's words, he has always had an uncanny awareness of his agents. She prays that his beliefs are not misplaced and that whatever bond exists between Clint and Eve, it is strong enough to call the woman before her back to herself, because she isn't sure that any of them will be able to save him if Eve Winchester doesn't pull through.


	4. Patience

While Fury and Natasha remain outside, he is careful not to show too much of the emotion that threatens to overrun him. She isn't out of the woods yet, he can tell by how pale and cool her skin is, but it reassures him to be close enough to her to see the rise and fall of her chest with every breath.

"Just me Evie," he murmurs as he pulls up a chair to the bedside. "Don't know if you can hear me but if you can... you're safe." He traces the very tips of his fingers over the back of her hand, avoiding the IV that is killing her pain, until he can stroke her fingers gently. His fingers shake and for a second when he looks at them he sees red, be blinks, once, twice and it is gone. He knows when the people watching from the other side of the glass leave; only then, with the feel of her skin against his own, does he allow himself to look at her properly.

She doesn't look like the Eve he knows so well, not really. Bandaged and bloody, pumped full of anaesthetics, she doesn't display that lovely spark that he admires so much in her. Even in sleep he can always sense the life in her, the fire that burns beneath her calm exterior, today he has to fight the urge to rest his hand against her chest just to reassure himself that her heart still beats. He can't feel her, not the way he is used to, not in the depths of his marrow, and when he takes her hand in his it's like she isn't there. He feels the skin and bone beneath his touch but what makes Eve is lacking, muted in a way that he cannot explain.

"Don't you give up, you hear?" he instructs her, pouring all the sincerity he can muster into the words. "Don't you go anywhere that I can't follow."

Clint knows that the desperation that claws at him is a natural response to seeing someone he cares for so hurt but the wave of emotional fragility that waits just behind that desperation worries him. It's been worrying Natasha too, all night he could see it in her eyes, even though she tried to hide it. he will not bow though, nor will he break, not now when there is so much left to fight for. He will not doubt. Struggling to find a comfortable position, he rests his arms on the edge of the mattress and puts his head down, just for a minute as the exhaustion catches up with him. The last sounds he hears are her steady breathing and the beeping of her monitors.

Twenty-four hours pass and he grows used to the routines of the medical bay, finding comfort in the reassurances that the nurses give when they check her vitals. Natasha shows up now and then, brown bag in hand and busies herself arranging an assortment of food on the small table that is supposed to go over Eve's bed. They have eaten like this a hundred times and the familiar motions help to soothe him. She never asks how he is feeling but he knows that she doesn't really need to, not many people can read him the way she does. She stays for a while and then she leaves him to watch over Eve alone. The routine repeats a few hours later when she shows up with more sandwiches and an enormous flask of coffee.

He snatches sleep where he can, dozing with his head at her side on the mattress. For a brief moment he contemplates climbing onto the bed and curling himself around her, trying to draw her back to him through touch and proximity, before dismissing the idea in case her doctors need to get to her quickly.

He studies her face while she sleeps, noticing for the first time how much she and Natasha have in common and wondering if that was the basis of the feelings he has toward her. He's never wanted the Black Widow, not in the way he forged a bond with the woman in front of him, but he has craved proximity to them both, still craves the presence and the grounding influence that they bring to his life, a touch of colour among the grey.

He thinks of his life and the weight of past actions, of how fragile the present really is, and he looks to the future that may or may not come to pass. He contemplates the cost of new beginnings and all that he is thinking of leaving behind if and when Eve wakes and tells him that she no longer wants this life that almost killed her. He knows already what his choice will be, though it will pain him to see it through, he made it the moment he saw her bleeding on the ground. She is the rarest and most precious thing in his world, he can live without everything else but not without her.

Natasha was the first to notice the way her fingers twitched against the mattress while he was talking. Once again at his side, she grips his fingers in her own as they wait to see what it means. Grateful for her presence and the silent support she offers, Clint leans forward and lays a hand on Eve's arm.

"Eve?" he whispers. No response. He turns to the red head at his side and notices the intensity of her expression as she watches Eve's face, as if she is willing their colleague to wake up. He allows a moment to wonder if the strength of her will can somehow make a difference and then he gives his full attention to the other woman in his life. Curling his fingers around hers, he tries again. "Can you hear me?"

His heart stutters as her fingers tighten around his. He hears the rush of breath as Natasha notices the response and feels her release the grip on the hand that she is still holding; she grips his shoulder gently as she rises. "I'll go and fetch the doctor," she murmurs before leaving them alone.

He has no idea what comes out of his mouth as he talks to her, determined not to lose the connection that has been made. Barton knows he might be talking, begging, pleading, he doesn't care what he says, it doesn't matter, because a few seconds after Natasha leaves Eve's eyes flicker open. She blinks. Once. Twice. The heart monitor announces the spike in her heart rate to the world as she momentarily panics at the surroundings she finds herself in. He moves quickly to put himself in her line of sight and is relieved when her pulse calms.

"You were hurt sweetheart," he explains calmly when he sees the confusion and the fear. "I've been waiting for you to wake up." Leaning over her, he stares down into the eyes of a warrior, someone who like him has seen their own death and escaped it. In this moment the ghosts that he sees in those depths are a problem for another day: those iron grey eyes, flecked with green and gold, are the most welcome sight he has ever seen.

Her head turns on the pillow, face still obscured by the breathing apparatus that covers her mouth, but her eyes hold his. She tries to raise a hand to her face but isn't strong enough to complete the movement. He shakes his head, unable to form the words he wants to say, needs to say. He wants to tell her that she should keep the mask on, tell her that he'll never let her get hurt again, he wants to tell her that he needs her in his life... but all he can do is meet her gaze and hope that she understands. Eve's fingers tighten around his, her eyes communicating the exhaustion she still feels, the confusion she encounters waking up somewhere different to where she remembers being and her concern over his state of mind. He has never been able to hide from her.

Her eyes slip closed again and he has a moment of panic, begging her to stay with him, pleading with her not to leave him again.

"Not goin' anywhere Barton," she murmurs. "Just let me sleep a while."

Oh the joy of hearing that voice, that accent. The temptation to try keep her awake is fierce, especially when he hears Natasha's footsteps in the hall, moving with purpose as she brings the doctor to assess her, but he can feel the difference in the hand he still holds even as she fades.

As she slips back into slumber she murmurs his name, a promise from her to him that she has found her way back and plans to stay. With that caress still in his ears, he lifts her hand and plants a soft kiss on the back of it. A promise of his own given freely and acknowledged by the slight squeeze of his hand in hers.


End file.
